Tag Archives: NaNoWriMo

Blink and the semester is nearly over. One month from today, I will be wrapping up my library classes for the semester. One month and ten days from today, I will leave for New York and fly home for a month of well-earned downtime. Where have these eight weeks gone? It’s unreal.

Classes have gotten steadily more interesting – I daresay I now actually enjoy reference. Children’s literature has exposed me to some great books I’ve never read before, and has reminded me of the magic of childhood. There’s something about the sense of wonder and curiosity that kids look at the world that I find inspiring, and it makes me want to run out and start writing children’s literature if only I could adequately capture said sense of magic. Maybe one day…maybe next year. Curriculum is well…curriculum. The professor is a lovely person, but the content feels largely pointless, and I wish that the class were structured differently.

So much to do, so very little time. And then there’s my novel. Which is crawling along at a dreadfully slow pace. And then there’s my unfinished fanfic, which I desperately want to finish but can’t carve time out for just yet. Thankfully this week is a holiday on Thursday (woot!) for Veteran’s Day, then class again, then THANKSGIVING! So very excited for that.

Crunch time is just around the corner, but I’ll make it through. But maybe I should set up my bed first.

Like many librarians, I harbor a secret yen to be a published author. And so, in an attempt to be vaguely proactive about attaining this goal, for the last two years, I have participated in NaNoWriMo, otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month. I have won both years, which means that I have two terrible, incomplete manuscripts of about 53,000 words apiece sitting cozily on my desktop, and I’m determined to give it another shot this year. But this time, I’m scared.

You see, it was a lot easier to meet my word count totals when I was teaching or working last year, because I had a great deal of free time. Now, I still have free time, but I also have major projects due throughout November and early December, when the semester ends. To give you an idea:

– Reference Visit to be done and written up

– 3 part lesson on American history to be written for curriculum

– Collection Development project for Kid’s Lit

– Annotated Bibliography project for Reference

– Literature Review for Kid’s Lit

– Anatomy class – tests and final, with two papers thrown in

In short, I may well go insane. Or not sleep. But therein lies the beauty of NaNo; teaching you that writing is always possible, and if you wait, you’re never going to write your novel. Technically, I’m cheating by recycling a few plot elements and a character from last year’s endeavor, but she won’t leave me alone, and I want to try and write her story, so let’s see how this goes.